India had never been comfortable with respect to the position of indebtedness during the last few years. Ever since the Congress(I) government took recourse to repetitive IMF loans and introduced the New Economic Policy in 1991 in conformity with the Structural Adjustment Programme of International Monetary Fund, the problem of indebtedness has been a continuing one in our country. But one needs to assess the contribution of a particular regime towards the worsening of the indebtedness condition. Although it is true that the entire blame of today's indebtedness of the country does not lie with the present government. But one need to assess what might have the government done? It could have eased the indebtedness problem by taking new measures, as this was the very problem, which they faced when they first took charge. They could have even maintained the same state of indebtedness of the country. But what they actually did was to worsen the situation. Moreover, they even went as far as to guise the statistical figures in nice ties so as to conceal the facts from the people of the country.

The White Paper claimed that the external debt of the country has swelled to $95.7 billion in 1998. It was within one year that the debt took up further from the increasing trend. They in fact showed a lowered debt -GDP ratio over time apart from a simultaneous high indebtedness over time. This was possible due to a subtle statistical jugglery in measurements of GDP by changing the base year and by including in and out certain items of statistical convenience. Although this was both ethically as well as statistically unfair, the government has been observed to do such things till the last year's annual budget. So surely it is the indebtedness figures and not the ratio which will be the concern of a common citizen. The White Paper further projects that the external debt would be swelling likely to a figure to touch as high as the record indebtedness in 2003-04. This high figure owes to the release of Resurgent India Bonds. These bonds were sold to non resident Indians in the period aftermath Pokhran nuclear blast to register the confidence of the non resident Indians. But this debt will have to be repaid with interest later on. The fund coming from the bonds may serve as a gateway to relief from balance of payments crisis today, but this short sightedness of the government will count costs tomorrow. The way of utilisation of these bonds has also not been a proper one and hence the costs of this debt are high. Who is going to pay the price? It is surely the citizen of India. The earlier Congress(I) government once did exactly the same kind of mistake by releasing India Development bonds, which caused a high level of indebtedness later on. This means not only generation, but also rather maintenance of an internal debt trap in the country.

Very often the government boasts of an inflated reserve of foreign currency. But according to the White Paper, 92% of the forex assets include "hot money " which may evaporate in a short time. They include short-term debt, foreign investment and other evaporatory components. Extent of volatility of the currency is high today which will cause problems at any time. The government's tenure may be short, but it happens that the tenure is matching with the degree and terms of the measures. Each measure taken by the government has been a makeshift one, as if it was certain about the age of its regime.